“I don’t actually know that much about music,” grins Tom Grennan. “And I don’t really understand the music industry.” A likeably blunt confession from the 30-year-old pop star whose appeal lies in his ability to articulate the emotions of “your average, working-class, boy-next-door from Bedford”. A shrug. “My childhood heroes were never musicians. I had posters of footballers – not bands – on my bedroom wall.”
How much do you really need to know about music to succeed at making it anyway? Grennan’s last two albums – Evering Road (2021) and What Ifs And Maybes (2023) – both topped the UK album chart. The combination of his Capaldi-esque rasp, Tiggerish stage energy and guileless emotional vulnerability fill arenas with fans of all demographics – young, old, male, female, LGBTQ+ and straight – around the world. His open-hearted exploration of how it feels to be a straight, young bloke dealing with ADHD and anxiety disorder in modern Britain has seen him become a campaigner for men’s mental health. He chats honestly about his feelings with DJ and One Show presenter Roman Kemp on their BBC podcast, You About?.
I’ve come to meet Grennan in a cosy radio studio, right after the pair have recorded a new episode. I watched Kemp straddle a motorbike taxi – struggling to keep his baggy Persil-white trousers away from the grubby wheels – on my way in. “Those white trousers,” chuckles Grennan as we sit down. “Mate! He’s just ASKING to get noticed!” The affectionate joshing is in keeping with the tone of the podcast – old-school boys’ bantz delivered with self-aware warmth and disarming mutual curiosity.
As the son of Spandau Ballet’s Martin Kemp and Shirlie Holliman (of 80s pop duo Pepsi & Shirlie), 32-year-old Ronan grew up in a world of wealth and fame, with George Michael as a very engaged godfather. Grennan gets to ask penetrating questions about that experience, while acknowledging that it hasn’t protected his friend from struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts. Kemp, for his part, asks about Grennan’s life as the son of a suburban Irish couple – a builder and a teacher – who met on the ferry to England.
“It’s my mum who really taught me to be honest about my feelings,” he says today. “She was always very honest with us, too. Saying stuff out loud usually makes sense of things, right? Or it can make it seem worse for a minute, or… yeah. But then…” Grennan often thinks aloud, switching tack mid sentence. He’ll answer questions then check himself – “No that’s a lie!”
His publicist has settled us on this sofa together to discuss his third album, Everywhere I Went, Led Me to Where I Didn’t Want to Be: a largely upbeat collection of 90s-inflected pop-rock strobe-pulsers (with echoes of George Michael and Mika) that have powered me through my gym sessions all week. But the tangentially conversational Grennan’s not a record-company-sales-pitch kinda guy. It’s a challenge to keep him on topic.
When I tell him that my teenage daughter wasn’t keen on chant-rapped sections of advance single “Shadowboxing” he nods enthusiastically. “That’s fair. Yeah, fair. I’m in two minds about it myself. It’s a weird one.” But it was the first song I wrote [with producer Justin Tranter] for the album. I was using my falsetto for the first time and it felt like I was unlocking a new level on a video game. It felt sick.”
His voice also punches up – over chunky piano chords – on Robbie Williams-reminiscent single “Full Attention”. The single’s video features Grennan in his football kit, in a men’s locker room, repeatedly crashing sideways into a larger man’s chest. Before the night he impressed mates with his vocals at a karaoke night and reassessed his career ambitions, he’d trained to become a professional footballer and played for Luton Town for a while before being released.
Today he screws up his face while reflecting on the “toxic masculinity” in men’s football. “A lot of things are wrong there and need to change,” he says. “I mean, how many gay players can you name in the Premiere League, right?” He shakes his curls. “When I was playing it was very laddy. Very: rrrrrrahh!!” He mimes a beery abandon, getting up in my face, then exhales. “That might be why I didn’t go further with it, because I was never really into that shit. I would be sitting in the changing room, my head in my hands. Pffft!”
He’s a supporter of former England manager Gareth Southgate for bringing in the more emotionally open and supportive attitude that has significantly improved the men’s performance in penalty shootouts. “People just perform better if you make them feel better. If they don’t feel judged and isolated. S’obvious.”
Grennan grew up feeling judged and isolated at school, he says. His dyslexia wasn’t properly supported, and he acted out and “got labelled as a naughty kid”. He adds that, “as a people pleaser and an ambitious person, I really wanted to do the work. If I couldn’t I’d catastrophise and think: I’m shit. I’d storm out of rooms, get detentions, isolations, exclusions that would often spiral from tiny problems.” Such as? “One time I remember I got asked to read aloud in class. I said: ‘I don’t want to do that’. The teacher said: ‘You have to’. I refused again and the teacher told the whole class to turn to look at me.” He was shaming you? “Yeah. I guess, yeah. So I picked up the book and I lobbed it at him. I was kicked out for that.”
Scratching at his gingery stubble, he mulls that “anger is the emotion boys go to above all others. Anger, in some boys’ minds, makes them feel like a man. It can help… or offer an outlet for communication.” A shrug. “When it comes to sadness, boys don’t like to show it. They don’t like to feel vulnerable or weak. For me, there was a moment when anger was heightened inside me.”
Grennan has, repeatedly, been on the receiving end of other men’s anger. Slightly built, he has twice been the victim of random, unprovoked public assaults. Aged 17 he was left with metal plates in his jaw (only recently removed) after three men beat him up in the street. On Pete Wicks’s podcast Man Made, he described being “held by three guys, bear hugged, so I couldn’t move and I just kept getting pounded in my face.” In 2022 he was attacked outside a bar in New York and left with a torn eardrum.
Looking back on that first assault – which triggered his anxiety disorder – he recalls being unable to leave the house and turning to marijuana to cope. “I smoked a lot of weed after I was attacked.” He says the drug initially offered temporary relief from panic and agoraphobia “but ultimately amplified all the fear and anxiety. I smoked a lot through university and I could see myself changing, getting lost.”
He doesn’t smoke at all now. “If I’d waited until I was older maybe I could actually enjoy it.” He’s not much of a drinker either. “I don’t enjoy alcohol. But if I do drink, I’ll really go for it…. whoosh! Not like my wife [Italian pilates instructor Danniella Carraturo – they married last May] who can have two glasses with a meal and leave it at that.” He shakes his head. “Wild.”
Sinking deep into the sofa, Grennan says that while he “wanted big, singalong melodies” on the new album, “a deeper dive will mean you can hear a lot of sadness.” You’re dancing it out? “Yeah. Pushing through all the issues I’ve struggled with and stumbled through and fought against in my twenties. I’ve had to work every day to find ways to fix myself, to navigate this weird world of showbusiness I was thrown into…” Does he ask Kemp’s advice on handling fame? “No,” he laughs. “And I wouldn’t take that advice if he gave it to me.”
Kemp famously cried on air during his final breakfast show for Capital Radio last year (after he’d held the slot for seven years) and Grennan’s new album includes a song called “Boys Don’t Cry”. The singer is a proud sobber. “I cry all the time, all the time,” he says. He recently cried watching Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore 2. “The first film is a favourite, so it was partly a nostalgia thing,” he says. “But sometimes a cry can surprise you. I’ll be on stage, sometimes, and look up on the big screen to see myself in tears.” Because of a song you’re singing? “No, it’s never about the songs, it’s more about the audience. There’s sometimes a special energy, a wave of emotion when you notice everybody is feeling the same thing at the same time. It’s unexplained, but you know it’s happening. Magic.”
“Crying is amazing, though,” he concludes. “It’s such a lovely feeling. That must be how the world must feel when a big storm happens. Before then, it’s humid and stuffy and you can’t breathe…. it’s gross to be outside. Then the heavens open and the world resets itself.” So more men should be doing it and talking about it? “Oh f**k, yeah!”
‘Everywhere I Went, Led Me to Where I Didn’t Want to Be’ is out on Friday
